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Three months and 50,000 deaths: the defining Covid-19 moments in the US timeline

From grim milestones to record unemployment rates and protests against stay-at-home orders, the pandemic has upended life across the US In just three months, Covid-19 has upended life in the US, ravaging cities and businesses and overwhelming hospitals woefully unprepared. What started as a single infection in

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Mystery bird illness investigated after German blue tit deaths

More than 11,000 cases of dead and sick birds reported in past fortnight Thousands of blue tits have been found sick or dead in Germany, prompting an investigation by conservation groups and scientists. More than 11,000 cases of dead and sick birds, mostly blue tits, have been can be spotted all year round in the UK, with the exception of some Scottish islands. According to NABU, symptoms of the diseased birds include breathing problems, no longer taking food and making no attempt to escape when approached by people. The group…

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‘No way food safety not compromised’: US regulation rollbacks during Covid-19 criticised

Major pork plant closed after hundreds of workers contract coronavirus, while speeding up of poultry production lines raises concerns over standards The US government is accelerating controversial regulatory rollbacks to speed up production at meat plants, as companies express growing alarm at the impact of Covid-19 on their operations. Last week Smithfield represents 45% of US pork production is said it was critical for the meat industry to continue to operate unabated. Now it has emerged that as a wave of plants announced by the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS)…

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‘Being prepared for the worst’ is nothing new for immigrants during Covid-19

For many immigrant and first-generation families who learned to be prepared for the worst, hunkering down to protect each other is nothing new Sio Massiahs Oakland neighborhood isnt as diverse as the one she grew up in in New York City. Ahead of California governor Gavin Newsoms March 16, 2020 Before, I never understood why [my family] bought so much rice. But kale isnt going to get me through a pandemic, she quipped. When I got there and rice, plantain and corned beef hash were already gone. I knew all…

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Amazon sales of ‘non-essentials’ hit by French court ruling

Online supplier to appeal against staff virus safety plan in France which sought to limit orders to food and medicine Amazon must stop selling non-essential items or face a fine of 1m a day until it can come up with a safety plan to protect the health of its employees, a French court has ruled. The ruling, which has already been suspended pending appeal, required the company to only accept orders for groceries, toiletries and medical products as part of the wider lockdown imposed in France. The company was sued…

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Bangkok’s water festival venue before and during coronavirus, in pictures

Photographs taken in Bangkok before and since the coronavirus outbreak show the emptied locations of the citys annual Songkran water festival In Thailand the Songkran festival was cancelled nationwide to combat the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. The water festival is normally held every year to celebrate the traditional Thai New Year on 13 April, when people splash water on each other and sprinkle powder on their faces as a symbolic sign of cleansing and washing away the sins of the past year. The Central World shopping mall. The Central…

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WHO looks into report of Covid patients testing positive after negative tests

Reports from South Korea say some patients had tested positive while being considered for discharge The World Health Organization (WHO) has said it is looking into reports of some Covid-19 patients testing positive again after initially testing negative for the disease while being considered for discharge. On Friday South Korean officials reported that 91 patients thought to have been cleared of the new coronavirus had tested positive again. Jeong Eun-kyeong, the director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told a briefing that the virus may have been…

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Coronavirus could push half a billion people into poverty, Oxfam warns

Nearly half of all jobs in Africa could be lost without urgent action, says charity More than half a billion more people could be pushed into poverty unless urgent action is taken to bail out poor countries affected by the economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic, plans to offer debt relief to the worlds poorest countries and whether to increase the funds available to the IMF through the creation of special drawing rights (SDRs), a form of international currency that can be used to help struggling countries. The UN, which…

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Killer of Bangladesh independence leader arrested after 45 years on run

Ex-military captain one of dozens sentenced to death for murder of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Police in Bangladesh have arrested a fugitive killer of the countrys independence leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, nearly 45 years after the brutal assassination, the countrys home minister has said. Abdul Majed, a former military captain, was arrested in the capital, Dhaka, Asaduzzaman Khan said, adding that the arrest was the biggest gift for Bangladesh this year. Majed publicly declared his involvement after the killing, and had reportedly been hiding in India for many years. It was…

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‘You think Trump will save you?’: my nine days detained by North Korea’s secret police

Alek Sigley was studying in Pyongyang when he was blindfolded and taken to an interrogation facility where his handlers demanded he confess to his crimes Do you know what day it is? asked the man as we sat in the black Mercedes-Benz that had whisked me from the foreign student dormitory at Kim Il-sung university, where I had been living in the North Korean capital Pyongyang. I knew full well, but he answered his own question: Its the day the US imperialists invaded and started the war. It was Tuesday…

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Coronavirus outliers: four nations with very different approaches to the crisis

Some nations have managed to maintain surprisingly low death rates even without swinging into lockdown Harrowing images of emergency workers struggling to cope with the onslaught of Covid-19 cases have made front pages around the world, highlighting the terrible impact the disease is having. Death tolls in Italy and Spain have been especially alarming. But not every nation has suffered to the same grim extent. Some have avoided lockdowns but have still not suffered huge leaps in case numbers. Others have introduced strict monitoring and contact tracing of infected individuals…

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How Mexicans help satisfy British demand for blood plasma

A growing source of the UKs blood plasma is from Mexicans crossing the border into the US and donating at high frequencies, which some experts fear could risk their health The first time I went, I wanted to cry, said Luca, a mother of three, describing how her economic situation would compel her to do the journey from her home in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Jurez to line up outside a blood plasma donation center in El Paso, Texas. There are more than 800 such facilities in the…

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Tokyo 2020 Olympics in doubt as Canada becomes first team to pull out over coronavirus

Canada takes action to protect public health as Australia tells its athletes to prepare for Games in 2021 Canada has become the first country to warn that it wont send its athletes to the coronavirus pandemic. The Canadian Olympic Committee said holding the Games as planned would threaten the health of its athletes, their families and the broader Canadian community for athletes to continue training for these Games. In fact, it runs counter to the public health advice which we urge all Canadians to follow, it said in a statement,…

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Rand Paul becomes first senator to test positive for Covid-19

Senator of Kentucky who was seen at the Senate gym Sunday morning says he is feeling fine and is in quarantine Senator Rand Paul has said he has tested positive for Covid-19, the disease caused by coronavirus, with the Republican becoming the first member of the Senate to test positive. A post on the Kentucky senators Twitter account said on Sunday that he is feeling fine and is in quarantine. Paul, an eye surgeon, said he has not had symptoms and was tested out of an abundance of caution due…

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‘Be careful’: Spain’s last 1918 flu survivor offers warning on coronavirus

Jos Ameal Pea, 105, is watching on anxiously as a new pandemic sweeps globe Jos Ameal Pea was four years old when the 1918 flu tore through his small fishing town in northern Spain, its deadly path narrated by the daily ringing of church bells. More than a century later, Ameal Pea believed to be Spains only living survivor of a pandemic said to be the after the countrys press were among the first to report on it, killed between 50 and 100 million people around the world. In Ameal…

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